Apropos of Nothing

Apropos of nothing: here's the AIS screen snapshots of the position indicators belonging to a large number of vessels moored or moving around St Barths (Saint Barthélemy, officially the Collectivité territoriale de Saint-Barthélemy, also known as St. Barts and St. Barths or St. Barth an overseas collectivity of France in the Caribbean), today Dec 31st 2025. St Barths is really just a tiny spec on the map.

The thing is that many of the vessels (luxury private yachts) that have come together here belong to some of the very richest people in the world. I'm sure you have a rough idea who I might mean ... funnily enough it's not too far away from another island that once belonged to a certain Mr J Epstein. 

Anyway Happy New Year everyone! Don't expect much of a difference in 2026 though.

This Is Not A Drill

Everyone Pays

"You either take the cookie policy or you refuse it and pay. That is the deal. Welcome to journalism and information access now. Nothing is free. Everyone pays."

I love everybody, well most of the time: My generation had the Beatles. That is what I thought. I thought it was normal. There was nothing strange about them. They were just there. They had always been there. I was eight when I noticed them, and at eight you do not know what you are missing. I did not know the rest of the world was noticing them too. They were everywhere; records, television, films, newspapers. That was how life was.

Later they called it a Boomer thing. At eight, the word meant nothing. I knew about the War and the Space Race. I knew Elvis and Hollywood and the Cold War. I knew the radio shows and the children’s programmes. The Beatles fitted into all of it. Black and white. Scratchy records. Radios that glowed and buzzed. They were part of life. Like Bible stories at Sunday School. Like sweets. You did not question them.

The adults did not like them. They said the songs were noise. They said the hair was wrong and long. They said Liverpool produced nothing good. That was what they said. We did not listen. We argued about the Beatles or the Stones and hurt each other to prove it. We knew the Beatles were better, but the Stones looked dangerous, and danger counted for something. The adults said it would pass. They were wrong, and they knew it.

In time we learned the truth. Our gods were men. They failed. They broke. They told us this from the start, but belief is easier than understanding. Understanding takes work.

By my sixteenth year it was finished. The breakups came. The scandals followed. Others tried to take their place. Sure they could play and write and sing, but it was never the same. They followed the tracks already made. You cannot walk that way twice. What was lost could only be copied, and the copies were weaker. The world kept turning.

Now machines remake the past. They bring back faces and sounds without weight or soul. You can look at it, but you cannot taste it. It is empty. We watch it happen and know where it leads. History repeats, but it never heals. Time does damage. The Devil is in the small things, and he stays there, happy.

You tell your story anyway. It may matter. Few will believe it or take note. Then people grow old and die, and the story plays again on a screen in a universal loop. The world does not need more shows. It needs care. It needs honest hands. Once there was a chance but humans are a stupid race. The machines took it and trashed it. What comes next is earned. It did not have to be this way.

impossible songs: Now ... and Then

impossible songs: Now ... and Then: Photo above by LB, Koln 2025. As above, farewell for the time being. P.S. Not this year but in case anybody forgot ...

Attack of the Furries.

Your very own Cheddar Ploughman's sandwich. It's from Urban Eat but they're not the one's to blame. The vendor has a problem, perhaps it was lost at the back of the fridge or the display. We'll never know for sure. It should have been eaten by 19th November - the sad sandwich was at it's best before that date. Now it's had a bad attack of the furries. No surprise that nobody wants to eat it. Nobody ever wants to eat furry sandwiches for their ploughman's lunch.

Perhaps We're All Dead

If consciousness is not bound by space or time, then it is possible we are already on the other side and do not know it. We go on as if this is the beginning, or the middle, when it may be something else entirely.

Many physicists say that time, as we feel it, is not real. It is a way the mind keeps order, like a man marking days on a wall while the seasons move without asking him. If consciousness is not fixed to one place, then past, present, and future may all exist at once.

In that case, we may already be dead. The body moves. The days continue. But awareness stays tied to this narrow moment, convinced it is the whole of things.

Some Eastern traditions say that life is a dream. They call it Maya. You live inside it, believe it, suffer in it, and wake from it only when the dream breaks. Death, then, is not an ending. It is waking up.

That idea sits close to what physics now suggests. Consciousness may not belong to the body at all. It may be part of something wider and older than time. Something that does not begin or end.

If that is true, then nothing important is lost. We are only passing through one version of the dream, still unaware that the waking world may already be waiting.

Or,

They may call it the block universe theory now. It says that the world is not moving forward the way we think it is. It says everything that has happened and everything that will happen is already there, laid out whole.

Time does not pass. There are only moments. Each one exists, steady and complete, like points on a long road. You stand in one of them and feel it moving because you cannot see the rest.

If this is true, then somewhere in that road you are already dead. It is not a threat. It is only a fact, the way the end of a journey is already marked on a map before you ever begin to walk.

But death, then, is a thin thing. An idea more than an ending.

Einstein once wrote to the family of a friend who had died. He told them that the difference between past, present, and future was only a stubborn illusion. His friend was not gone. He was simply in another part of the whole.

You can think of it like a man fishing a river. The water keeps moving, but the bends of the river do not. The fish he caught yesterday is still caught there. The fish he will catch tomorrow is already waiting. The river does not care which one he remembers.

So yes, in one place in the universe, you have finished. In another, you are just beginning.

And here, in this narrow stretch you can feel, you are alive. Your lungs fill. Your heart works. The day is still yours.

That is enough for now.

Incorporate

Your task: Incorporate elements of electronic equipment, automotive styling and functionality in a colourful but standard photographic design. Keep it simple, well composed and ensure all the source material is recognizable. Any suggestion of a deeper meaning or message is unimportant to the project so no need to consider any of that. You have 24 hours starting from now. Failure is not an option. (10 Marks).

What gave you your edge?

How did it happen? How did I get this edge? This edgy feeling, this bristle, the persona of some salty old dog. I never was at sea. Not very wise either. Thinks to much but doesn't do anything with it. Shame really. 

In the dark mornings it is hard to find the floor. There are pale shadows running down like they spent their career in dampness prevention. I screw on the tap and plug the kettle in. I open the jar and check the milk. Nobody has Ovaltine first thing in the morning. Nobody who knows anything.

Rain is on the windows. The wind comes and goes and rattles the chimney flue. There are ashes in the fireplace. I will clean it later and bring in more firewood. They say they might outlaw log burners soon and push heat pumps onto us. The common good requires it. I feel I am too far down the road for that.

They do not understand the insulation problems in most Scottish houses, the way they were built back then. Heat pumps are not enough. Understanding a problem before acting is not a skill much valued now. It is better to do something that sounds right and makes a good line. Usually it is the first thing that comes to mind, or to the mind of an adviser with a degree in Australian style cookery. The BBC will carry it.

I breathe out and drop the part I was playing. Enough of that. I say it quietly to the shadows. I take my time and watch them fade into the wall, or wherever shadows go when they are finished.

Outside the light is dim. I fill the feeders so the birds can eat early. There is still some quiet satisfaction to be found there. Outside with the cold rain on your face. Improperly dressed I suppose. A strong silence beats the thunder of a vacuum.

impossible songs: Points Mean Prizes

impossible songs: Points Mean Prizes: Pink Floyd: I've no idea what I'm doing here, there's a number  generator  they say. Also something else  it seems, perhaps I...

Economic Gossip

They tried to illustrate the debt of various nations by stacking up biscuits. That worked for me but there are other stories to spin. Secrets and lies. Made me wonder about the bend that reality has taken over economics. Crash landings and no accountability. History is a harsh mistress when nobody can admit the hunger they have and the mistakes they made along the way. 

The huge amounts of thinking, writing and talking about dirty economics and the complete lack of real control over economies and the practices that are revealed - slowly. We only see that we are being played. Too many hard men out there, all too easy to bully the weak and to rattle the markets. All the beans and bean counters with their good intentions that only get obliterated - but then they only bring plastic knives to real gunfights. Now AI wants to run the show and they'll let it. 

This Isn't About Them

Strictly speaking, this BLT isn’t a BLT at all. It’s a BRT but nobody gives a shit. The R stands for Rocket, which may or may not be real lettuce. It’s green enough, and they stack it in the salad aisle, but you can never be sure. Is it the greatest sandwich ever made? Hard to say. There are others that stand in the ring with it.

1.There’s the crayfish and rocket number. Pret used to make one if you were too refined to build your own.

2.There’s a piece on real chips with brown sauce. A working man’s meal once. God only knows if it’s survived the death of the deadly old chip pan.

3. Peanut butter and jam—strawberry jam, crunchy peanut butter. Smucker’s Goober will do in a pinch, though it’s grape and tastes like a far away childhood that never quite happened.

4. Pastrami and pickle, the New York kind, maybe with a slice of American cheese sweating between them like a couple on a cheap date.

5. Crisps of any sort, so long as they’re not vinegar, with a good smear of mayonnaise to ease the going.

6. Anchovies and mustard on toast. That one’s for the brave, or the lonely, or those who have no patience left for Presbyterian opinions about food. No need for salt but you might add a tomato.

I forgot the fish finger sarnie. There may be more. Thinking of all this tires a man.

The bread used to be the Scottish plain loaf. It was the standard. The one true bread for a chip sandwich. Now it’s gone. Possibly banned by the health men in grey suits in grey offices filled with blue screens. Maybe outlawed by the same quiet forces that kill off anything good. I can’t find any in the shops. It feels like something from an old fever ward, spoken of but never seen. Dark times. There are pale and new generations suffering this loss, but they don't even know it.

These days the world is full of white sourdough. Fashionable and fickle stuff. I'm stuck with it for now, leaning into the forces. Diet is important to the rich, essential but tricky for the poor. Two-fifty for seven or eight airy slices. Hardly the people’s bread. It tastes fine though but the cheaper loaves of supermarket junk just taste bad these days, though a good rye can surprise a man if he’s lucky enough to come across one. Tiger bread remains an alternative but lacks staying power.

Leave out the rolls, the stotties, the muffins, the brioche buns. They’re not the bread for a true sandwich. They’re something else and this isn’t about them.

Free Graphic

They (🍎) gave us, and everyone else I guess, a free graphic. So we feel we have to use it. Display it like a badge or a trophy. For whatever it means. Free-loaders. An imaginary bag of magic beans. We're just chimps accepting another banana tossed into the pen while they scoff fine food and wine uptown and maintain a safe distance from the zoo, the coal mine or the paddy field. We scratch each other and check for fleas or tics.

Every so often there's a bit of a fight between the stronger and bigger chimps in the pen or they'll pick on the weaker chimps because they caught a decent sized banana or just seemed contented, but nobody outside pays attention to that sort of thing. They're quite happy if we fight amongst ourselves instead of attacking the fence that keeps us trapped.

That's the truth about the state of the music industry and most of life in general. If you can't see that then you're clearly not looking, perhaps you're not bothered. I'm not bitter. I'm passed that. There's a numbness setting in. The temple of the low man. Life just goes on. 

impossible songs: Fat Balls Diary

impossible songs: Fat Balls Diary: Today's entry is a bit of a diary thing based around real or possibly fictitious events that took place yesterday, 25th - in no particul...

Eight

I discovered this figure, one which looks like an eight, in an old wooden floor. The floor had no other numbers or blemishes in it so it was a puzzling sight. I've no idea how or why it got there. Eight (8) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In nuclear physics it's the second magic number. The seven most widely recognized magic numbers as of 2019 are 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126. Atomic nuclei with a "magic" number of protons or neutrons are much more stable than other nuclei. I'm no expert but I can believe that. However it's clearly nothing to do with this number 8 being there, marked into the surface of the floor for no obvious reason. I'll leave it here.

November at Seventy

The morning arrived without ceremony, as if it had slipped in through a crack in the night rather than risen in any deliberate way. I became aware of it not by light but by the thinning of darkness, that hesitant grey peculiar to November in Scotland, a colour that seems less like the world revealing itself and more like an admission that it has little to offer today.

I lay there for some time, listening to the house settling into its Sunday quiet. At seventy, waking is no longer the abrupt shift it once was; it comes in stages, like a tide feeling its way up a beach. First the awareness of the cold in the room, then the protest of the knees, and finally the familiar heaviness in the chest—a weight not painful but simply present, like a reminder. Of what, I couldn’t say. Age, perhaps. Or the sum of all the days that came before this one.

The clock ticked with an insistence that felt louder than it should have. I imagined the long corridor outside the bedroom: the cold tiles, the slight draught that always seemed to gather near the skirting boards, the framed photographs whose colours had dulled along with the years they depicted. There was comfort in these things, even in their shabbiness. It meant continuity.

Outside, a wind was moving across the roofs, not strong, just persistent. I could picture the sky without needing to open the curtains, clouds like dirty wool pulled tightly over the town, the suggestion of rain hanging in the air, undecided. Somewhere in the distance a gull called, its voice thin and lonely, echoing the emptiness and flatness of the harbour, down the hill and across the chimney pots to the north.

I finally pushed myself upright, feeling the stiffness crack along my spine. This, too, was part of the ritual: the confirmation that the body had once again agreed to the small labour of living. I shuffled to the kitchen, where the kettle sat cold on the counter, stainless steel reflecting that same dreary morning light.

The first boil of the day always felt like an event. Not because of the coffee, though I have come to rely on it, but because it marked the moment when the house began to wake with me. The kettle’s rising groan, the faint smell of the gas radiator beginning its reluctant work, the soft clank of mugs as I set them down. These were small sounds, almost nothing, yet they stitched together the hour in a way that felt solid and reassuring.

Through the window I watched the neighbour’s garden, brown and sodden, the last of the leaves clinging to the branches like stubborn old men refusing to admit the season had moved on. A blackbird hopped across the frost-licked grass, pausing occasionally as if trying to remember what it was looking for. I need to top up the feeders.

And there I stood, hands around the warm mug, the steam rising gently into my face. Sunday mornings used to feel like pauses in a busy life; now they feel like mirrors, showing me the quiet I carry everywhere. But there was nothing bleak about it. Only a kind of clarity, a recognition that the world was still here, grey and tired and slow, yes, but here nonetheless. And so was I. Sunday morning. Now where had that cat got to?

Black on White

Spindly, boney, twiggy, stretchy, creepy, silent.

Black and white

White on black

Negative and positive

Reversed

Turned around

Now steady.

Checkout the Checkouts

I don’t like the robot checkouts. No one really does. You give in to them because time is short and life is dull. You stand in a line behind people who can’t find the barcodes, and you think about the old days when someone else did the work. But now it’s just you and the machine.

The rich don’t wait. They don’t line up with a basket and a few cans of beans. They make rules about “efficiency” and “savings” and someone somewhere gets richer. You just want to get home.

Aldi is best. Small, tight, quick. The barcodes are large and true. Everything scans first time. The people there are steady, fast, and silent. The machine doesn’t talk. It works. You feel something clean and sharp in that.

Tesco is a mess. Always noise, always too much. Staff talking, lights flashing, alarms for things that don’t matter. They sell too much of everything. You stand there, waiting for help that never comes. Machines talk sometimes, but not all of them. The fridges have doors now. Whose idea was that? The place feels tired and greedy.

Morrisons is nothing. Not bad. Not good. Just there. You can buy bread that looks fresh. You probably won’t.

Co-op has a strange machine that beeps in odd ways. It talks like a man from the west of Scotland. You hear it every day and it grates on you. Still, it works. It’s quick.

Boots is hell. No one is ever at the till. You try to buy something simple, and it becomes hard. You give up.

M&S is fine. The machines are tall, the baskets have nowhere to go. You lift things higher than feels right. Someone designed it without ever buying food.

B&Q is not a supermarket but it feels like one run by men who’ve forgotten what shopping is. Sometimes you do it yourself, sometimes a man in orange helps. If you’re behind someone buying pipes and plaster, you suffer.

Lidl is like Aldi’s scruffy brother. The bread is good. The machines work. Sometimes they sell peanut butter with jam already mixed in. That’s something.

Asda is solid. Plain. The kind of place you go when you just want to eat. Their meal deals make sense, unlike Tesco’s. Tesco’s make you want to walk into the sea.

Waitrose is another world. I went once. Paid a man. The bread was good.

Maybe I’ve drifted from the point. But it’s my space to drift in.

Next time: which of these fine systems can be fooled the easiest.

A Plain Day

Dopplegangers

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Dull Challenges

1. Alphabetize a phone book – By hand, from A to Z, page after page, using colour coded tags. A-A, A-B, A-C etc.

2. Count grains of rice in a 10 pound bag – No tools allowed except a magnifying glass and tweezers (optional).

3. Watch paint dry – Paint and area of wall. Literally sit, time and monitor the drying process of multiple coats on various wall textures.

4. Transcribe the Urban Dictionary – Word for word in pencil, include all pronunciation keys and example sentences.

5. Sort a jar of mixed buttons by size and shade – Bonus points for labeling each pile with its Pantone equivalent.

6. Match identically shaped puzzle pieces from 10 large jigsaw puzzles mixed together – Without assembling the puzzles.

7. Track the evaporation rate of a glass of tap water – One measurement per hour, for a week.

8. Write “I love to procrastinate” 10,000 times – On lined paper, using your best handwriting.

9. Listen to an 8 hour loop of the Spotify Top Ten – No distractions allowed, and eyes must remain on a blank wall.

10. Identify and list every item in your most cluttered drawer – Create a spreadsheet with columns for weight, material, origin story, and frequency of use.

AI says

If it doesn't look incorrect then can it be correct? 

"Collection" is the latest album from Impossible Songs, released on September 26, 2023.

This Scottish band, led by John Barclay (guitars and vocals) and Ali Graham (keyboards and vocals), collaborated with Jennifer Clark on bass and Chris Scott on drums for this project. The album was recorded at Jennifer Clark's Studio in Falkirk, Scotland, between October 2022 and July 2023, with Clark also handling engineering and production duties.

The album comprises nine tracks, blending original compositions with a unique arrangement of the traditional piece "Greensleeves." Here's the tracklist:

1. "Witch"
2. "Something of Little Importance"
3. "Greensleeves"
4. "Shell (for Rhona)"
5. "Friends"
6. "Your Black Heart"
7. "Guilty Pleasures"
8. "Curiosity"
9. "Witch's Theme"

"Collection" is available for streaming and purchase on platforms like Bandcamp, Amazon Music, and Spotify.

impossiblesongs.bandcamp.com

amazon.com

Spotify

While there are some external reviews available from various sources, the album's description on Bandcamp notes that this project marks the band's return to writing and recording after a hiatus, reflecting their journey back into music.

For a more comprehensive understanding of the album, listening to it directly would provide the best insight into its musical style and themes.

So Long Marianne

Miracle Fat Blaster

Available at all really good pharmacies, on-line and outside indoor markets. As designed and made by the redoubtable AI Fairy of unknown origin. 

The FAT BLASTER! 

You to can look like a strange blue God from the Marvel Universe, or something similar or perhaps even more ridiculous than that. 

The master plan:

A bold, eye-catching headline: "SHED POUNDS FAST! The Ultimate Fat-Burning Breakthrough!"
A sleek, modern design with fiery and energetic colors like red, orange, and yellow.
A fit, toned figure in silhouette with a glowing effect, emphasizing rapid transformation.
A bottle of the "miracle drug" in the center, radiating such a powerful aura.
Small text highlighting key benefits: "Boost Metabolism | Burn Fat Fast | Clinically Proven"
A subtle disclaimer at the bottom: "Results may vary. Consult a doctor before use."

Don't say "possible risk of poisoning" or anything else.